By:  Marc Erlbaum, founder of the Common Party Originally posted on Medium and re-posted here with the author’s permission. In the wake of the Parkland shooting, millions of people around the country are both anxious, and anxious to react. The frequency of mass shootings in the U.S. has brought us to a boiling point which … Read more »

IF fellow, Shannon Wheatley Hartman, is visiting this year at Haverford College as a fellow-in-residence at the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. She is working with the center on the development of campus and community discussions with a particular focus on diversity and inclusion. She is also teaching a course that interrogates the intersections of … Read more »

By  Timothy Ruback, Ph.D. I teach Political Science, I started teaching in spring of 2002, and lasted more than a decade in higher education without ever having taught an internet course.  More than that, being of a certain age, I never took an online course when I was a student.  I had no first-hand experience … Read more »

The Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky and the Interactivity Foundation have been collaborating on a new, long-term discussion project on Agri-Culture & the Future of Rural Life. In November, we co-hosted a developmental discussion in Lexington, Kentucky. Students and faculty from Berea College, the University of Kentucky, and St. Catharine College came together to … Read more »

As the semester winds down, I am almost ready to reflect on my experience teaching Leadership in Practice at Kansas State University. As a fellow in residence in the Staley School for Leadership Studies (SLS), I engaged this course with the goal of training students to become community discussion facilitators. Like almost all IF and … Read more »

Edited by Shannon Wheatley Hartman and Dennis Boyer, this discussion guidebook explores the pressing issue of freshwater for the future. Like all of our discussion guidebooks, Freshwater for the Future is designed to encourage civil, exploratory, and developmental discussion across a series of possible, and often divergent, policy ideas. Check out the IF website in … Read more »

The seeds for the Agri-Culture & The Future of Rural Life Project have been planted. Co-managed by Shannon Wheatley Hartman and Dennis Boyer, this project will explore agriculture as it relates to identity, tradition, community, environment, food, as well as, the economic and political future of small town America. Project discussions will take place in … Read more »

What IF….Discussion Cards A Card Game that Improves Explorative and Collaborative Thinking Check out the Interactivity Foundation’s new discussion cards! They can be used in classrooms, workplace meetings, or even at home with the family. These cards help to promote good discussion practices by encouraging players to: Connect Analyze Clarify Engage Build Explore Expand Focus … Read more »